Good Movies Starring Terrible People

I was buying a birthday present for my wife the day Michael Jackson died. I know the exact day not because I’m a Michael Jackson superfan but because he died the day before my wife’s birthday, which explains why I was out buying a gift. I was standing in the middle of a department store with my two kids when the music they were playing stopped and was interrupted by a disc jockey announcing Michael Jackson had been found dead.

Now like I said I was not a huge fan of Michael Jackson’s in 2009, but in the 1980s, like every single Gen-Xer, I was a fan. My sister and I both owned Thriller on vinyl. And later, cassette. I practiced moonwalking until I wore tracks in our carpet. There were kids in my school — we’re talking rural Oklahoma here — who owned red leather “Michael Jackson” jackets and came to school wearing one glove. I recorded MTV’s special showing of “The Making of Thriller” on VHS and watched it a hundred thousand times.

So I was bummed when I heard Michael Jackson had died, which was not the reaction my kids had. I believe my daughter said, “good.” One of the earliest news stories involving Jackson in their lifetime was of him dangling his child over a balcony. In their lifetime, my kids only knew Michael Jackson from his torrid court testimony and the fact that his nose appeared to be falling off. We raised our kids on 80s and 90s music and they listened to Michael Jackson songs all the time, but their relationship with the performer and the art was very different than our generation’s.

Don’t even ask about the time I tried showing my daughter a Bill Cosby comedy special.

My wife and I recently watched the documentary I’m Chevy Chase and You’re Not (2025). The documentary pulls no punches regarding Chase’s legendary rude behavior; the hurtful insults and his obnoxious pompousness that has colored his entire career. Save for Goldie Hawn, the producers seemed to have a relatively difficult time finding anyone who wasn’t related to him to say something nice about him. From his costars on Community to former SNL performers, Chase seems to have made a point of leaving collateral damage on every set he’s been on.

For what it’s worth, Chase’s family does their darndest to humanize the actor. His wife says he suffered from anxiety attacks and his kids share how terrible it was to walk into rooms and have people boo him while they were at his side. The filmmakers do their best to make you feel sympathy for a guy who attended Saturday Night Live’s 50th Anniversary and wasn’t asked to participate while actors like Bill Murry were; then again, Bill Murry (who’s no angel himself) didn’t go back to the show and make AIDS-related jokes to a gay cast member and Chevy Chase did, so there’s that.

One of my guilty pleasures is 1992’s Memoirs of an Invisible Man, a film that Chevy Chase describes as “one of four movies I did in the 80s to support my coke habit” and which his wife says “he shouldn’t have done.” Of all the super powers to have, like flying and X-Ray vision and the like, I’ve always thought the ability to turn invisible would be the greatest. If you’re planning on committing even petty crimes with your superpower, it wouldn’t be hard to identify “that guy who flew away.” Being invisible though, man — the possibilities are endless — from pilfering food from buffets to swapping people’s caffeinated coffee with decaf. It seems like I could cone up with better things to do if I were invisible but you get the idea. In the film, Chase gets caught not once but twice by going to the only places where people are looking for him, but it’s still a fun movie and an invisible Chase ends up with Darryl Hannah so being invisible can’t be all bad.

But then there’s all the classics like Foul Play and Caddyshack and The Three Amigos and Fletch and all the Vacation films and there’s not a single moment where Chase doesn’t come off as being charming and likeable in front of the camera which is ironic as apparently when the cameras turn off, so does his manners.

There’s a part of me that wishes I hadn’t watched the documentary beacause so many of those movies tie into my childhood. Who hasn’t joked about visiting Wallyworld? Who didn’t love Paul Simon’s music video for “Call Me Al” in which Chase, inexplicably, lip syncs Simon’s vocals as the performer sits nearby playing the guitar? A few years ago while on a cruise in Mexico we discovered a Three Amigos-themed restaurant. I wore a (no doubt unlicensed) Three Amigos baseball cap for the remainder of our vacation.

My kids grew up on Community. They know why Chevy Chase got written off the show. They know about the voice mails and drama and all of it. And I hate it because they will never see Chevy Chase the way I see him.

Or at least the way I used to see him.